Cold Of Night
by ChicaFrom3
Summary: On separate sides of the island, Charlie and Claire reflect on recent events. Spoilers through All The Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues.
1. Promises

**_TITLE:_** Promises

**_AUTHOR:_** Kristen Kilar chickadeefrom3(at)yahoo(dot)com

**_RATING:_** PG-13. Angst. A bit of language.

**_DISCLAIMER:_** Sure, they're mine. That's why I waste my time writing fanfic instead of, you know, actually _working _with the show and telling Dom Monaghan that his contract requires giving me daily full-body massages. Yeah, right. goes off to cry

**_ARCHIVE:_** Just ask, I'd love to give permission.

**_SUMMARY:_** Charlie thinks about recent events.

**_SPOILERS:_** Up through "All The Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues". Mostly for "Cowboys", "Raised by Another", and references to "The Moth".

**_PAIRINGS:_** Charlie/Claire. Who else?

**_AUTHOR'S NOTES:_** Wow, even when I leave the Andromeda fandom I still write angsty introspections. Plot, someday, I swear, just not today. Not a one-shot! Part two coming soon, and that'll be it.

My first LOST fanfic! Yay! You know, I always said that I would never have an OTP. Nothing against people who have OTPs—you guys are great, I admire you, I just never thought I had the patience to 'ship _one_ couple that devotedly. Then LOST came along and made a liar of me. Charlie and Claire are _so_ destined for each other! Peanut Butter shall rule the world!

Dedicated to Myna, a.k.a. niki blue, a.k.a. rah rah replica, a.k.a. whatever other aliases she's picked up recently, for being my beloved beta and my best friend. Love ya, girl, and I knew Charlie/Claire would get its claws into you… Go read and review her _FANTASTIC_ story, "WhenYou Mentioned Blue".

Also dedicated to the LOST faction on ExIsle, the Charlie/Claire fan club on lost-boards(dot)net, and every other Charlie/Claire shipper in existence. You guys _rock hard_.

And finally dedicated to the _creepiest, scariest _TV moment _ever_. If you've seen "All The Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues", you know what I'm talking about. How many were ready to kill JJ Abrams?

Everything I know about DriveSHAFT I learned from the greatest fansite of its kind, DriveSHAFT: Second Tour of Finland at www(dot)driveshaftband(dot)com .

Please please please review?

* * *

He sits there, huddled under a blanket and staring with unseeing eyes into the fire, and thinks.

He left her.

Bloody hell, _he left her_.

Why does he always have to break his promises?

He's pretty sure he didn't leave her by choice, because he's almost certain that he _wouldn't_. No, he thinks it's far more likely that he was forced into it. That Ethan separated them.

Or maybe Ethan didn't. Maybe she was _right there_, staring with horrified blue eyes and sobbing and begging _please, no, please, please, oh God, no,_ as Ethan blindfolded him and tied the vines around his neck and hefted him off the ground and she _screamed_…

He shakes his head to try to rid himself of the image.

He doesn't know for sure what happened.

He doesn't know for sure if she was there.

He feels cold.

All he knows is what Jack and Kate told him.

Jack heard her scream.

Kate didn't.

His own memories are a mess—blurry, out of focus, jumbled, hard to find—and trying to set them in order gives him a headache, but he tries anyway.

She went into labor, only she didn't.

Ethan didn't go get Jack.

Ethan had a knife and told them to go.

Her hand in his, and he promised he wouldn't leave her.

And then nothing makes sense.

There were others, weren't there? Besides Ethan? That's why he'd said _they_ to Jack. Only not. Ethan had to have been alone, because he can't remember any other faces, just Ethan's, and who would've helped Ethan kidnap them anyway?

How far had Ethan made them walk? In silence, because Ethan had flipped out anytime either of them had uttered a syllable. He isn't sure how far they walked, only that it felt like forever and they were both terrified.

He's sure Ethan made them walk in silence, and yet he remembers whispering reassurances in her ear.

There's only one piece of tape, now grimy and torn, left on his hand, the letter _E_. He remembers dropping the letter _L_ in an attempt to leave a trail. He remembers that Ethan caught him when he dropped _A_. Then what happened to _T_? He doesn't remember.

Nothing makes sense, and his dark tangle of memories scares him, and all he knows is he left her, and he's so cold, and his neck and ribs ache, and he can't erase her terrified image from his eyes, and her terrified voice echoes in his ears.

Jack promises him that they'll find her. Kate tells him that Locke and Boone are still out looking, and that they'll send another search party in the morning.

He doesn't answer either of them. He just stares at the fire, and thinks.

In a classically brilliant move, he'd told her about his drug problems _while she was having contractions_. Genius!

But when she looked at him, there was no judgment in her eyes. No hate, no fear, no disgust, no anger, no pity.

Instead there was pain as another contraction wracked her body. There was begging as she pleaded with him to _get Jack_. There was trust and need and, he fancies, maybe even love.

That, he remembers with crystal clarity.

She was depending on him. On _him_!

_I won't leave you. I promise._

So much for promises, he thinks, and remembers that he's never had the best of luck with keeping his promises.

He had promised himself he would quit the band in order to stand by his morals. He didn't. He had promised himself he would live a good Catholic life even while he was touring with the band. He didn't. He had promised Liam that he would make them walk away if it ever got to be too much. They didn't. He had promised himself—he had promised _everyone_—that it was about the music. It wasn't.

He had promised his parents he would get help for his budding drug problem and go back to the Church. He had promised himself that this was his _last_ hit, after this he was going clean. He had promised Liam he would keep in touch. He had promised Pat and Sinjin that he would put the band back together. He had promised God that he would do everything right if he just survived this plane crash.

He'd failed at it all.

And now he's failed her too. He promised to stay by her side and instead…_he left her_.

His neck hurts from the hanging. His ribs hurt from Jack's resuscitation. He can't keep his thoughts straight. He's so cold, despite the blanket and the fire and the hot water someone gives him.

None of that matters.

All of that will heal.

What matters is that he broke his promise to her.

In the morning, he vows, he will join the search party, no matter what Jack says, but he knows even that won't fix it.

He left her.

Like Thomas did.

Thomas, who he will gladly kill if he ever gets the chance.

Thomas and Ethan, he'll kill them both, to his addled mind they're interchangeable. Thomas, in Australia, who broke her heart and was too blind to see what the bloody git was leaving behind. Ethan, on the island, who took her away and frightened her and killed him so now he _can't remember what happened_. They might as well be the same person to him.

Everything's all mixed up in his head.

Jack tells Kate (when they think he isn't listening, but he hears everything) that it's probably an aftereffect of the oxygen deprivation.

He doesn't care, and happily imagines various bloody ends for both Thomas and Ethan.

That won't fix this either, though.

Nothing can fix the fact that he broke his promise to her.

_Bless me, Father,_ he says silently, still staring at the fire, _for I have sinned._

But he'll find her, he tells himself. He'll find her and she'll be safe, her and her baby both, and he'll keep them safe, and he'll never leave her again.

And that's a promise.

FIN


	2. Alone

**_TITLE:_** Alone

**_AUTHOR:_** Kristen Kilar /chickadee(underscore)from(underscore)3(at)yahoo(dot)com/

**_RATING:_** PG-13. Angst. A bit of language.

**_DISCLAIMER:_** Sure, they're mine. That's why I waste my time writing fanfic instead of, you know, actually _working _with the show and telling Dom Monaghan that his contract requires giving me daily full-body massages. Yeah, right. /goes off to cry/

**_ARCHIVE:_** Just ask, I'd love to give permission.

**_SUMMARY:_** Claire thinks about recent events.

**_SPOILERS:_** Up through "All The Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues". Mostly for "Cowboys" and "Raised by Another".

**_PAIRINGS:_** Charlie/Claire. Who else?

**_AUTHOR'S NOTES:_** The second (and last) installment. Hey, it's not a one-shot! Check part one for dedications, etc. As always, much love and many hugs to Allie, my beta. And yay! for reviewers. Thanks, purple sky, suspenser, Harper's Pixie (twice!), Christina B, AndromedaAbyss, szhismine, and Psyche. I love you forever!

Love it? Hate it? Think I should stop writing and work in fast food instead? I can't know unless you tell me, so review!

* * *

She sits there, huddled under a blanket and staring with unseeing eyes at Ethan, and thinks. 

Her head hurts, her stomach hurts, and she is so afraid.

Afraid for herself, yes, and for her baby, but mostly for _him_. She can't erase the image from her mind of Ethan blindfolding him, tying vines around his neck, and stringing his body up from the trees.

He was so brave through all of it.

She wasn't.

She cried and screamed and begged Ethan to stop. Ethan didn't listen.

She's sure he's dead now, and that scares her more than anything. Scares her more than polar bears and plane crashes and dehydration and madmen with knives who want her baby all put together—_he's dead _just keeps running through her head over and over and she ends up bursting into tears until Ethan gets irritated and tells her to shut up or die.

He's dead.

He's dead.

She sees him swinging there high in the trees, and she struggles against another round of sobs.

She has to be strong for the baby.

He'd want her to be strong for the baby.

He envied her for her strength, he'd said. He'd said he wished he could be as strong as she was.

She has to be strong.

She wants to cry, she wants to die, but she has to be strong.

She wishes he was with her, holding her hand, telling bad jokes to try to make her feel better, calling her _love _and telling her that everything will be okay. She hates being alone.

Then she tells herself she's a horrible person. He died for her, to keep her safe, and all she can do is blame him for not being there with her?

She wouldn't want him to be here anyway. He doesn't deserve to go through this terror.

But she misses him.

She thinks she should want Jack, who would be able to help her physically. She thinks she should want Locke, with four hundred knives and the skill to use them. She thinks almost any man among the survivors would probably be more useful than him—he really isn't much use in a crisis, to be honest, and he rarely seems to know what he's doing, and he seems to have even more demons than she does—

But she wants _him _to be beside her. He would make her feel better.

He isn't scared by her—by her pregnancy or her unmarried state or her obvious vulnerability.

Wasn't.

He wasn't scared by her.

She can't get into the habit of thinking him in the past tense, and then decides that she doesn't particularly want to.

She doesn't want to accept that he's dead, even though she knows he is.

She almost starts crying again.

She's so cold, despite the blanket Ethan has so kindly provided her with.

She gets the bizarre feeling that Ethan is under the impression that this is taking care of her. She wants to tell Ethan that she'll gladly trade the blanket and the 'care' for him back beside her.

He promised he wouldn't leave her.

So did Thomas. Thomas promised that they could _do this_, that this could be _like the best thing ever_.

He made no such promises. He just wrapped her in a blanket and sat beside her and took her hand and said he wouldn't leave her alone.

Then why is she so cold now?

She wants to tell him to bring her another blanket, and to put his arms around her.

But he's not there for her to tell.

She needs someone to blame, so she blames Thomas, and Malkin, and even Rachel for taking her to see Malkin and Melissa for introducing her to Thomas.

Thomas and Malkin and Rachel and Melissa, she blames them for the crash and the island and Ethan and the image of him swinging from a vine, dead, blindfolded, and she can just make out the letter _E _on his hand…

She shudders and tries not to vomit and she's so scared and it's so _cold_, a tropical island shouldn't be this cold…

She feels so alone, and even when the baby kicks her, in a friendly reassuring way, it doesn't keep her from feeling alone.

She wants so bad for him to be there with her.

It scared her when he promised to stay with her. It scared her when he brought her tea in the jungle and teased her and offered to be her confidant. It scared her when he chased after her and offered to carry her bag. It scared her, because it all smacked of the nice guy things Thomas had once done, and that meant he might leave her too, just like Thomas did.

So she tried to push him away. She spoke coldly to him and rejected his offers and told him flat out that he just wanted to save her because of the baby.

He didn't act like Thomas would have. He didn't run. He barely seemed to acknowledge what she was doing. He just kept on, kept making friendly advances, kept trying to help her and reassure you.

He's not Thomas, she finally convinced her heart. There's no reason to be scared.

And at the exact moment her fear started fading…this happened.

And now he's dead.

He's dead, and she never got to tell him that she wanted to be his friend. She never got to tell him that she might, just might, want to be more than…

Ethan took her bag, almost first thing. She wishes Ethan hadn't, because there are things in there that might make her feel better now. Things that remind her of him.

Like her peanut butter jar, full of 'extra smooth' peanut butter. Like her journal, which contains, among other things, a dozen anecdotes about him. Like the blanket he wrapped around her shoulders as he promised to stay with her.

The baby kicks again and she sucks in a breath.

She tries to imagine scenarios. She tries to imagine that he survived—that one of the survivors found him in time, that Jack worked medical miracles—that even now he's on their trail trying to rescue her. But she can't make herself believe them, and she ends up just feeling more miserable.

She knows he's dead. In her heart of hearts, she knows he's dead.

She wraps her arms around herself and her baby and rocks herself back and forth slowly.

He promised he'd never leave her alone, and she tries to lean on that. Tries to tell herself that he's with her, even now, that his soul hasn't left her even if his body has. But she can't feel his familiar, warm, comforting presence.

_I won't leave you, Claire_, he said.

Then why does she feel so alone now?

FIN


End file.
